We wanted to share a beautiful letter Kathleen recently sent to all those who were booked to be joining her WildQuest retreat this May 2020. Her retreat, Being Ocean, is one of the weeks that heartbreakingly will not meet this May, due to the continuing travel restrictions we’re all experiencing right now.  We were so moved by Kathleen’s heartfelt words, which echo the sentiment from all of our hearts here at WildQuest, that we wanted to share this as an open love letter to all of you.

Beloved pod mates,

I hope this finds you and all your loved ones well in your respective homes around the world.

We, here in Bimini, on this tiny rock in on the south eastern edge of the Gulf Stream have been, like so many,  maintaining social distancing, and on certain days remaining in our own yards or apartments.  As we think of you in so many places, New York, Maine, Canada, Germany, Cuba, spanning the globe. 

I admit I am so disappointed we won’t gather together.   And I know this disappointment has swirled as its own particular grief amongst the much much larger grief for what is happening on our planet, and for how we treat each other and other species.  I am letting it swirl, move, learning from it, and letting it flow onward.  I trust you will each come to Bimini at the time that is right for you. Thank you so much for your understanding.  

I was so looking forward to sharing my beautiful home with each of you, sharing threads of practice, having the honor of introducing you to the ocean and dolphins here, and to offering a space of exploration and refuge.  Perhaps, more than anything I looked forward to us witnessing each other in these experiences, feeling that we are an US and finding new and more luminous ways to embody this. 

In this time, I urge you to see, hear, feel, even more around and inside of yourself, cultivating discernment and openness at the same time.  While we are outwardly less active, we can be more deeply engaged.      

Seeing, feeling, hearing, sensing

For me, each day has peace, wonder, anger, grief, and joy.  

The hummingbird in the bush.  The turtle in the canal behind my house.  A gasp of relief hearing a friend has come off a ventilator.  Frustration as I listen to my nurse friends. The kiss of the cool waves.  The material uncertainty of the future.  I alternately burn and rest in the meditation practice.  I suspend in the breath and listen to my heart slow down; the gift of the apnea practice.  I count myself so incredibly lucky for simply being OK in this moment.  Working with the breath and the body, I can feel things that I might otherwise brush by – or  harden or tighten or busy myself against.  As though the ocean has been lapping at the land, and now she fully comes ashore.  I am mining this time for the gifts.

Outwardly constrained, we can take the opportunity to listen to the deeper rivers of our history, our now, to our minds, emotions, and bodies; to be in the flow of this massive tide and let the flow reshape the shoreline/the interface with what happens around us, while making the essential threads of our life all the more glowing and obvious.  

I hope, too, amidst the great challenges, you are finding ways to let your creative spirits soar, in the way that is beyond and before product or profit.  Having fun.  Laughing crazily.  Just making things!  In the dance of what is and what may be. 

Most of all, I hope you are all WELL.     

In love and kindness 
Kathleen and all of us at WildQuest